I'll never forget the Rector's Conference at St. Mary's Seminary during which our rector, musing on the relative emptiness of the seminary in the 90's compared to its peak-filled capacity of the 50's and 60's quoted this sonnet, especially the verse:

bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang.

When I came upon this picture of cassocks hanging on the line to dry, I thought of that rector's conference and Shakespeare's sonnet. I suppose the rector looked at so many empty pews in chapel and thought back to younger days when no seat could be spared.

Though the rector was thinking primarily about the death or passing of an age in the church, this sonnet surely gives us pause to consider our own mortality. And more than the verse about singing birds, its last two verses have sustained me and given me much to pray about at funerals and during times of other losses:

I'll never forget the Rector's Conference at St. Mary's Seminary during which our rector, musing on the relative emptiness of the seminary in the 90's compared to its peak-filled capacity of the 50's and 60's quoted this sonnet, especially the verse:

bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang.

When I came upon this picture of cassocks hanging on the line to dry, I thought of that rector's conference and Shakespeare's sonnet. I suppose the rector looked at so many empty pews in chapel and thought back to younger days when no seat could be spared.

Though the rector was thinking primarily about the death or passing of an age in the church, this sonnet surely gives us pause to consider our own mortality. And more than the verse about singing birds, its last two verses have sustained me and given me much to pray about at funerals and during times of other losses: